Christ's Crucifiction was Predicted 1,000 years in Advance

King David ruled Judea and Israel circa 1010 to 970 B.C. (1)  He was a poet and a prophet, inspired by the Holy Spirit to write at least 73 of the 150 Psalms. (2)  The Apostle Peter testified that the Holy Spirit inspired David. (Acts 1:16) (3)

In the 22^nd Psalm, David wrote the last words that Jesus Christ spoke from the cross.  He also gave a vivid and detailed description of the death Jesus would endure to pay the price for our sins; 1,000 years after Psalm 22 was written.

Psalm 22

My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
“He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”

I am poured out like water,
And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It has melted within Me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And My tongue clings to My jaws;
You have brought Me to the dust of death.

For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet;
I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me.
They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.

(Psalm 22: 1,7-8,14-18 NKJV) (4)

Imagine pain so severe that one would feel like He could count His bones!  What a Savior we have in Christ our Lord.  He alone is great and worthy to be praised.

(1)  https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/king-david

(2)  Rydelnik, Michael, and Vanlaningham, Michael, et al. The Moody Bible Commentary, The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, 2014.

(3)  Ibid.

(4)  https://biblehub.com/nkjv/psalms/22.htm

The U.S. National Debt

According to the Treasury Department the United States’ national debt, as of May 27 , 2020, was $25,683,672,542,543.70. (1)  To put it in more readable terms, that is close to 26 trillion dollars.

People have a difficult time understanding how much money 26 trillion dollars really is.  I know I do.  I’m “retired and on a fixed income.”  I worry about spending more than five dollars for a bag of plastic fishing worms.

The Internet is replete with examples of how much a trillion dollars is: how much it would weigh, how long it would take to count it, how far the bills would stretch if placed end to end, and so on.  Put another way, the U.S. public debt is now over three times greater than the cost of all our wars combined. (2)  It helps me to put it in quantifiable terms.  In the United States, 1,000 times 1,000 is one million.  One billion equals one thousand million, and one trillion equals one thousand billion.

Apparently, our elected representatives in Washington D.C. don’t have a clue about how much money they are spending.  One would hope that if they understood the damage they are doing, they would quit doing it.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, wants to add trillions more onto the debt.  Coronavirus relief is a noble cause.  What we need is a spending bill that will meet the peoples’ urgent needs.  We do not need is a bill that adds Mrs. Pelosi’s pet social programs onto the Corona Virus relief.  Various Democrats are advocating for universal Medicare, free college tuition, and a guaranteed minimum income for everybody.  They cannot specifically say where they intend to get the money to pay for it.  They talk about raising taxes on the “rich” and raising corporate taxes.  Listen up, average American.  When they do that your jobs go to workers in other countries.

President Trump wants to build new airports, roads, bridges, and who knows what else. Republicans spend big on national defense.  We need a strong national defense, but we need some idea about how we are going to fund it.  The Republicans favor tax cuts to increase revenue by growing the economy.  They failed to anticipate the COVID-19 pandemic, which erased recent growth in our economy and the economies of many other nations.  Thus, we are left with the additional deficit created by the tax cuts, and the anticipated additional revenue has not materialized.

Basic money management rules say:

1.    Never borrow money unless you know you can repay it, and you have a sound plan for doing so.

2.    Never spend the money from an expected financial windfall until you have it in your pocket.

What does the federal government do when it runs out of money?  They borrow it.  When the federal government can’t pay for what they have borrowed, they just print more money.  Average American, when that happens your money is worth less, and it takes more of it to buy a loaf of bread, a package of plastic worms, a pair of shoes, or a gallon of gas.

The gross domestic product (GDP) is a measure of the economic activity in a country, state, province, etc.  It is also referred to as the size of the economy.  The nominal GDP is the size of the economy before it is adjusted for inflation.  After adjustment for inflation, it is called the real GDP.  The following is stated in terms of the United States’  nominal GDP:

In 2018, our GDP was $20.58 trillion, and it was $21.44 trillion in 2019.  The source projects that the GDP of the United States will be $22.32 trillion in 2020. (3)  It is not known if the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was anticipated in the 2020 figure. The point is that our national debt now exceeds our GDP.  A lot of people worry about that.

Will the United States of America get to the point that we must default on our national debt?  Will we end up owing so much to foreign countries that they will be able to manipulate our government?  The currencies of the world are valued in relation to the U.S. dollar.  What happens if the dollar loses so much worth that it must be revalued?  Will we precipitate a world economic crisis?  Will there be a one-world currency?

Good luck finding candidates, Republican or Democrat, who care about or understand the long-term consequences of our obscene national debt.  Even if a candidate says they are for a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, things have gotten so bad that it would probably create an economic crisis if one were passed.  The way that new money is circulated into the U.S. economy is that the federal government and member banks (among others) borrow it from the Federal Reserve.  Some have called that a “debt based economy.”  The national debt is never going to go away as long as debt is the mechanism for adding new currency to the pool of money available.

The best we can hope for is that somebody will make the national debt an issue in the 2020 general election, and that good people will be elected who will work to get the debt back to less than a trillion dollars.  Inform yourself.  Then, write your senators, congressmen, and the president.  Write your candidates.  Call them on the phone.  Let somebody know you think this is important.

The Holy Bible says that, “the borrower is  servant to the lender.”  Who will America end up serving?  Pray it is not the Antichrist and a one-world economic system.  Look up!  Jesus is coming soon.


(1) https://treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/pd_debttothepenny.htm

(2)  https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/c/costs-major-us-wars.html

(3) https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/